Ledell Lee appears in Pulaski County Circuit Court Tuesday, April 18, 2017, for a hearing in which lawyers argued to stop his execution which is scheduled for Thursday. Unless a court steps in, Lee and Stacey Johnson are set for execution Thursday night. Lee was sentenced to death after being convicted of killing Debra Reese with a tire iron in February 1993 in Jacksonville. (Benjamin Krain/The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette via AP)

VARNER — Arkansas has executed an inmate for the first time in nearly a dozen years as part of its plan to execute several inmates before a drug expires April 30, despite court rulings that have already spared three men.

Ledell Lee's execution was the first in the state since 2005. He was pronounced dead at 11:56 p.m. Thursday, four minutes before his death warrant was due to expire.

Lee, 51, was put on death row for the 1993 death of his neighbor Debra Reese, whom Lee struck 36 times with a tire tool her husband had given her for protection. Lee was arrested less than an hour after the killing after spending some of the $300 he had stolen from Reese.

The state originally set four double executions over an 11-day period in April. The eight executions would have been the most by a state in such a compressed period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The state said the executions needed to be carried out before its supply of one lethal injection drug expires on April 30. The first three executions were canceled because of court decisions.

Two more inmates are set to die Monday, and one on April 27. Another inmate scheduled for execution next week has received a stay.Arkansas prepared late Thursday to carry out its first execution since 2005 after three other lethal injections planned by the end of the month were scrapped in the face of court challenges.

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Ledell Lee's execution less than an hour before his death warrant was set to expire at midnight, rejecting a round of last-minute appeals the condemned inmate's attorneys had filed. An earlier ruling from the state Supreme Court allowing officials to use a lethal injection drug that a supplier says was obtained by misleading the company cleared the way for Lee's execution.

Arkansas dropped plans to execute a second inmate, Stacey Johnson, on the same day after the state Supreme Court said it wouldn't reconsider his stay, which was issued so Johnson could seek more DNA tests in hopes of proving his innocence.

The state originally set four double executions over an 11-day period in April. The eight executions would have been the most by a state in such a compressed period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The state says the executions need to be carried out before its supply of one lethal injection drug, midazolam, expires on April 30. Three executions were canceled because of court decisions, and legal rulings have put at least one of the other five in doubt.

Lee was executed for the 1993 death of his neighbor Debra Reese, who was struck 36 times with a tire tool her husband had given her for protection. A prison spokesman said Lee on Thursday declined a last meal and opted instead to receive communion.

Justices on Thursday reversed an order by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray that halted the use of vecuronium bromide, one of three drugs used in the state's lethal injection process, in any execution. McKesson Corp. says the state obtained the drug under false pretenses and that it wants nothing to do with executions.

McKesson said it was disappointed in the court's ruling.

"We believe we have done all we can do at this time to recover our product," the company said in a statement.

Justices also denied an attempt by makers of midazolam and potassium chloride — the two other drugs in Arkansas' execution plan — to intervene in McKesson's fight over the vecuronium bromide. The pharmaceutical companies say there is a public health risk if their drugs are diverted for use in executions, and that the state's possession of the drugs violates rules within their distribution networks.

The legal maneuvers frustrated Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who had set the execution schedule less than two months ago. The state's elected prosecutors also criticized the roadblocks to the execution plans.

"Through the manipulation of the judicial system, these men continue to torment the victims' families in seeking, by any means, to avoid their just punishment," the prosecutors said in a joint statement issued Thursday.

The Arkansas Supreme Court said in a 4-3 ruling that it would not reconsider its decision to stay Johnson's execution. Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's office said she would not appeal that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lawyers for the state have complained that the inmates are filing court papers just to run out the clock on Arkansas' midazolam supply. Prisons director Wendy Kelley has said the state has no way to obtain more midazolam or vecuronium bromide. At one point in the proceedings before a federal judge last week, Arkansas Solicitor General Lee Rudofsky declared, "Enough is enough."

Earlier in the evening, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on a previous batch of appeals with new justice Neil Gorsuch voting with the majority of five on the to deny the stay of execution sought by Lee and the other inmates. Justice Stephen Breyer said in a dissent he was troubled by Arkansas' push to execute the inmates before its supply of midazolam expires.

"Apparently the reason the state decided to proceed with these eight executions is that the 'use by' date of the state's execution drug is about to expire...In my view, that factor, when considered as a determining factor separating those who live from those who die, is close to random," Breyer wrote.

Arkansas execution drugs intended for surgery, heart issues

Arkansas' death penalty protocol includes two drugs that are typically used in surgery and one that benefits cardiac patients.

A look at the drugs:

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MIDAZOLAM

Midazolam, which Arkansas hasn't yet used in an execution, would be the first of the three drugs administered and would be used to sedate the inmate. Because the state's supply reaches its expiration date April 30, Arkansas scheduled eight executions before then.

At normal adult doses of around 4 mg for routine surgery, midazolam can slow or stop breathing to the point that medical literature advises doctors to monitor patients closely. With a 500 mg dose listed in the state's execution protocol, Arkansas expects that the inmates will not be aware they are dying.

In federal court testimony last week, doctors differed on whether midazolam is an appropriate execution drug, though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in 2015 that it is.

U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker had said Saturday that Arkansas' execution protocol doesn't outline what would happen if the inmate were to remain conscious even if given a double dose. She also said the protocol doesn't lay out what executioners intend to do to ensure that the inmates are unconscious. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday reversed her decision.

In typical medical settings, midazolam relaxes people and produces amnesia.

The second drug, vecuronium bromide, is a muscle relaxant, but not in the typical sense. Rather than being prescribed for tightness or muscle pain, vecuronium is used to prevent muscles from moving so they don't interfere with surgeons. After receiving the drug, patients must be on a ventilator or they will suffocate because their diaphragm cannot move.

One doctor testified that being given vecuronium bromide without sedation and ventilation would be equivalent to being held underwater. The typical dose is up to .1 mg/kg intravenously, or 8.5 mg for the typical inmate set to die this month. Under Arkansas' protocol, executioners would administer 100 mg, or more than 11 times the typical dose, five minutes after the midazolam is administered and once the inmate is unconscious.

The AP last year used redacted drug labels to identify Hospira, which was purchased by Pfizer, as the likely manufacturer of Arkansas' vecuronium bromide. The supplier McKesson Corp. has said it sold Arkansas the drug for use in inmate health care, not executions.

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POTASSIUM CHLORIDE

Potassium is essential for maintaining a proper heart rhythm, and levels that are too high or too low can cause heart trouble. Medical experts who testified before Baker said that the final drug, potassium chloride, causes considerable pain when injected and is typically diluted when given to patients.

A typical dose is 20 milliequivalents delivered over several hours. Arkansas plans to use 240 mEq immediately after the inmate is injected with vecuronium bromide.

The director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, Wendy Kelley, testified last week that Arkansas was not charged for its current supply of potassium chloride. She said the supplier wished to remain anonymous and did not want to generate a bill of sale so there would be a smaller chance of being identified.

Fresenius Kabi USA, a subsidiary of the German company Fresenius Kabi, said last week that it appeared to have manufactured the potassium chloride the state plans to use.

Why are executions stopped? Death penalty questions answered

WHY DO SUCH DELAYS TAKE PLACE?

Inmates can spend years, or even decades, appealing their convictions and death sentences in state and federal courts. The average time between sentencing and execution for prisoners executed in 2013 topped 15 years, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

By the time an execution takes place or is stopped, often after the inmate has been fed his intended final meal, four or more different courts are supposed to have examined the trial record, legal issues, newly discovered evidence, assertions of innocence and claims of constitutional violations.

And yet inmates plead with varying amounts of success that key elements of their case have never been examined by a court. Lawyers for Arkansas inmate Lee are working at both the state and federal level to get a court to block Lee's execution, scheduled for Thursday. Lee claims blood and hair evidence from his 1993 trial has never been tested and could help prove his innocence. In federal court, Lee said a string of incompetent lawyers failed to make the case that he is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible to be executed.

New issues also arise late in the process, including questions about execution drugs. On Wednesday, inmates asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case challenging the use of a sedative used in flawed executions in other states and one of three drugs Arkansas plans to use in its executions. In 2015, justices upheld Oklahoma's execution protocol that used the same drug.

WHAT'S THE PROCESS?

The Supreme Court has the final say on almost every execution, and the justices reject all but a few emergency appeals by inmates.

The justices and their clerks know well in advance when executions are scheduled and where. A court official informally known as the death clerk keeps everyone up to date and communicates often with lawyers for inmates and the states as the date of execution nears.

As lawyers for condemned inmates press the case for delay in state and lower federal courts, the Supreme Court receives information about developments and, eventually, copies of those decisions.

Most often those lawyers press their arguments at the highest court in the country in a final attempt to save their clients' lives. Less often, it's the state that seeks permission to proceed after a lower court has blocked an execution. That's what happened Monday in Arkansas.

WHAT HAPPENS AT THE HIGH COURT?

When those appeals reach the Supreme Court, they go first to the justice who oversees the state in which the execution is scheduled. But death penalty appeals almost always are referred to the entire court.

The justices typically do not meet in person to discuss these cases, but confer by phone, and sometimes through their law clerks, according to the court's guide to emergency applications.

It takes five justices, a majority of the court, to issue a stay or lift one that has been imposed in another court. The overwhelming number of last-minute appeals are denied, and often without comment.

Occasionally, one or more justices will dissent from the decision to let the execution take place. Even more rarely, a justice will explain why.